‘So…’ he said.
‘Maks was killed by six Wallachian mercenaries, from a group that at the time numbered nine in total. We called them the Oprichniki, as a joke.’ Aleksei could not recall a moment when it had been funny. ‘Originally there were twelve of them, but Maks had handed three over to the French, who executed them. That’s why the others wanted revenge.’ There had been a time – a very brief period – when that was essentially the story as Aleksei himself had believed it, before he had discovered that all but one of those mercenaries were in fact vampires. He doubted whether Kyesha would have gone to all this effort if his concerns were not in some way related to that fact – it was more than conceivable that he was a voordalak himself; Aleksei had never seen him in daylight. But that sort of information could keep until Aleksei was more certain of its value.
‘What were their names?’ asked Kyesha.
Aleksei pushed the knucklebones towards him. ‘That’s another question,’ he said.
Suddenly, the dais in which they were sitting was filled with light. They both looked towards it. Aleksei’s eyes adjusted, and he saw that its source was no more than a lantern.
‘You can’t sleep here,’ said a voice emanating from behind the light. Aleksei was taken back for a moment to the French occupation, when enemy soldiers had constantly harassed him and other Russians who had remained in the city. But this voice spoke in Russian, not French. It was one of the guards from the nearby Saviour’s Gate of the Kremlin. Aleksei rose to his feet. He would have needed only to show the guard his identification papers for the man to be running back and forth between the Kremlin and the Lobnoye Mesto, bringing them tea and vodka and anything else they might ask for, but he preferred to let the evening end there.
He walked down the stone steps, back into Red Square. Kyesha followed him. The soldier stood above them, at the entrance to the platform, waiting to see that they left.
‘Until tomorrow,’ said Kyesha. He gave a half-hearted salute and then turned away, heading down the hill towards the river. Aleksei’s journey took him north. When he was halfway across the square he glanced back and could see the glimmer of the guard’s lantern as he stood waiting at the Place of the Skull. The next time he looked, the light had gone.
Domnikiia was not asleep when Aleksei slipped into bed beside her. He had kissed Tamara lightly on the forehead as she slept, and she had not woken.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Domnikiia.
It wasn’t a question she normally asked. She knew the nature of his work, and knew therefore that there was much he could not share with her.
‘Just… seeing people,’ he said. ‘You know.’ He gazed up into the darkness, fixing his eyes on a ceiling he could not see. He felt Domnikiia roll over towards him. Her cool, naked thigh curled over his and he felt her cheek on his chest. Her arm reached across him and she squeezed him tightly to her. He stroked her long, dark hair. She said nothing. There was a melancholy to her that he had only known once before, many years ago.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘They’re back, Lyosha,’ she said softly.
He was tempted to reply with a patronizing ‘Who?’, but Domnikiia knew him well enough not to be fooled by it. Ever since he’d seen that red lettering scrawled on the walls of his study in Petersburg, he’d known that, in some sense or other, they were back.
‘How do you know?’ he asked.
‘Yelena Vadimovna told me. There’s been a murder – at least, that’s what they’re calling it. A man. They found him out near… near where I used to work. But it wasn’t murder. She told me about the body. The blood. The throat. It sounds just like Margarita.’ The image of the corpse of Domnikiia’s friend and colleague Margarita Kirillovna lying on her bed, naked, with her throat ripped open flashed into Aleksei’s mind. Once he had had no further use for her, Iuda had slaughtered her. Of course, Iuda was not a voordalak, but in killing he had impersonated one. And though Domnikiia had not, Aleksei had seen the bodies of enough victims of true vampires to know that it was a precise impersonation.
‘That could be just exaggeration,’ said Aleksei. ‘Someone’s throat is slit and rumour blows it out of all proportion. It would have been at least third hand by the time it got to Yelena.’
‘I’d have thought that, if you hadn’t come dashing down here to see who left you that message. Did you find him?’
Aleksei had not told her anything since his visit to the theatre. She had not asked, but now that she did, she deserved an answer.
‘He claims to be Maks’ brother.’
‘Maks didn’t have a brother,’ she said, with no pause for consideration.
‘Are you sure?’ Aleksei had thought the same, but did not share Domnikiia’s glib certainty.
She got out of bed, and Aleksei heard her walk over to her dressing table. A light flared as she lit a candle. Aleksei watched as she bent forward and opened a drawer. She brushed her hair back over her shoulder, revealing her breast. He still felt thrilled by her. She turned her face to him, detecting his gaze, and smiled a short tight smile that said so much about their relationship. Then she delved into the drawer and pulled out a battered old notebook. She returned to the bed, placing the candle on the table beside him, and slipped back under the blankets. She flicked through the book, not reading in detail, but just glancing at each page, as if looking for something in particular.
‘You know you were always impressed by my memory,’ she said.
‘I still am.’
‘Well, I cheat.’ She held the book out to him; it was folded back so that he could only see one page. It was a blur to Aleksei. He had not noticed many signs of old age encroaching upon his body, but his worsening eyesight was one of them. He pushed Domnikiia’s wrist, moving the page further away from him, and held the candle close to it. The writing at the top of the page was largest.
Snowman.
He narrowed his eyes and read on.
Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. Captain. Lyosha.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘It’s my client notes,’ she said. ‘Every man who ever paid me to lie back and convince him he was the greatest fuck I’d ever known. And to convince them of that, you have to pretend that they made an impression. And to do that, it helps if you remember things about them.’
‘And Snowman?’ he asked.
‘I gave you all nicknames. Some didn’t tell me their names at all. Most lied. A nickname is easier to remember.’
‘But why Snowman?’
‘You saved me from a vicious snowball attack, remember?’
He laughed and she bent forward to kiss him. He felt her lips touch his, but his eyes remained on the page. There was a huge amount of information, with little structure to it, just added as it was discovered.
No uniform. Married. Son. Dmitry. Fingers. Marfa.
Two brothers.
There were dozens of small details about his life, his habits, his interests. And amongst all that, with increasing frequency and candour, descriptions of activities which Aleksei could not even have begun to describe in words, and yet every one of which he recognized with a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure.
The last thing on the page was about halfway down – a single short phrase. The rest was blank.
Miss him.
Aleksei looked over at Domnikiia. Her eyes glistened. He stroked her forearm gently with his thumb.
‘You were very professional,’ he said.
‘Mostly.’
‘But I don’t think we want anyone else to see this, do we?’ he said, reaching forward and pretending he was about to tear the page from the book.
‘Hang on!’ She snatched the book from him. ‘I still need to check things sometimes.’